The day we greet Ruwaidah at Istanbul’s airport, the sun coaxes tulips into bloom along roadways and in the city’s parks, then wind and chilly drizzle arrive like a slap to the face. The morning’s warmth tricked us into leaving behind our sweaters, so we’re not ready for the shifty Istanbul weather—and neither are the flowers. They keep their petals open to the rain, hopeful for the sun’s return.
We whisper to each other as we wait outside customs, our hair or headscarves and shoulders damp, our emotions a jumble. Those of us who remember her are eager to be reunited after more than thirty years. Those of us too young to have met her check our phones.
A few months ago, at home in Jidda, we heard the horrible news about Ruwaidah’s daughter, Mayyadah. God have mercy on her. Word spread among us like a sudden windy rain. Like the cancer that took her at age thirty-six. Inna lillah, wa inna ilayhi raji’un.
We had known Mayyadah was sick. Rula, her aunt, her mother’s sister, had gone to see her in America, and had come back praying for God to heal her.
Upon the news of Mayyadah’s death, we called Ruwaidah—we’d gotten her mobile number years ago from Mayyadah, but had never been brave enough to use it till then. We begged her to come to Jidda to grieve with us, but before we begged, we had to explain. She seemed not to recognize our voices—though who else would call her speaking Arabic? When we named ourselves, she seemed not to understand why she was hearing our voices. As though we, not her daughter, had died.
Years ago, some of us were closer to her than the space between two fingers. Others weren’t even born yet.
Some of us were convinced that if we only asked her to, she would return home after many years away, simply because we wanted her to. Why? Why were we so sure we could entice her to come back, when she hadn’t returned for the death of her mother, for the death of her father?
“My passport . . . so long expired . . . it’s too difficult. . . .”
We could help, we tried to assure her. We could make things go smoothly for her.
Still, we couldn’t persuade her. But we heard her voice crack on the phone, like a cheap glass tea cup filled too quickly with hot liquid. Her voice told us what she couldn’t say in words: she had finally realized she missed us the way the thirsty miss water. Here, we realized, was the opportunity to ask her to meet us somewhere in the world.
We chose Istanbul, a place we know well and visit often. We enjoy that the light in Istanbul is less harsh than in Jidda, the air more mild. Rula has a permanent flat in Istanbul, and we enjoy walks in the park during daylight, instead of having to wait till nightfall when the temperature drops, as we do for most of the year at home. When we visit Istanbul, we buy sesame bread and Turkish coffee, and one of us always flips the drained cup and reads the grounds. Others of us call the practice bid’ah, behind their backs of course. Who are we to guess God’s will?
“Istanbul,” Ruwaidah repeated on the phone, almost as though she’d never heard the word before. “OK.”
We were elated. We daydreamed about seeing her again, so soon. The workers among us asked our bosses for a week off, and the business people among us left our shops in the care of our shopkeepers. Those of us with school-age children left them with our maids and drivers; those of us who cannot afford maids and drivers stayed behind.
Now, on this day of reunion, she walks through the big metal doors out from customs, and our stomachs twist like the cords of an iqal. We have not seen her in so long. She has not changed a bit. She has changed so much. Look at her, hair short and hennaed, with a touch of white at the roots, as though her true, older self is peeking out. She can’t see our grays, concealed by headscarves, hair dye, wool caps that snap at the brim. We take in her face, the same face we remember, except stuffed into a drawer and pulled out again, thirty years later, rumpled and creased here and there like cotton.
How much she’s aged! America has aged her!
When she sees us, her mouth compresses, as though she’s a child caught in a lie. It takes a moment for us to realize the tall, stocky white American man in a baseball cap and tan sneakers wheeling an identical suitcase is with her.
“You look the same,” we say, and “Who is he?”—confident the American doesn’t understand a word of Arabic. Americans hardly ever do.
We are right. He smiles and nods. He doesn’t understand. Some of us speak to him in English, and he looks grateful.
The youngsters try, surreptitiously, to snap photos for the WhatsApp group, but they are blocked when others of us rush to hold Ruwaidah, kiss her cheeks, tell her again, “God amplify your blessings.”
We want to touch Ruwaidah’s hair. We have not touched her in so long. But we’re not sure how to touch her. We want to fold ourselves into her arms. We kiss her cheeks over and over.
“You’ve been a stranger to us,” we say, and by that we mean, “We’ve missed you.” Thirty years—how can that be? They went by as quickly as a sunrise.
Some of us—Ruwaidah’s brothers—kiss the man on both cheeks. He moves in to the wrong cheek; he hesitates when we go on and on with the kissing, cheek to cheek; he nearly kisses someone on the mouth.
Some of us—Ruwaidah’s sisters—stand back from him when he reaches to shake our hands.
We men explain to the American how long it’s been since we saw our sister, how soon since the news of Mayyadah, how we are people who feel deeply, as though, a few of us think, our culture has a stranglehold on pain and emotion. The American nods some more, gets a glint in his eye like he’s about to argue, catches a look from Ruwaidah, and stops. His tongue presses into his top lip as though he’s burned the roof of his mouth on too-hot coffee or tea.
The next day, we men sleep in, watch soccer on TV, work out at the gym down the street, while we women gather at Rula’s flat to soak rice, season lamb, toast almonds, simmer sauce, chop onions and cilantro, carve out squash and tomatoes and stuff minced meat into their hollows with our thumbs, set the table, lend each other extra chairs, and, for after the meal, grind coffee with cardamom, stack tangerines in a basket, and, finally, fix a plate of dates rolled in sesame seeds, stuffed with almonds, dusted with shaved coconut.
When the bell rings, Ruwaidah and the American look fresh. “We went for a walk this morning,” she says, “to look at the tulips.”
“Beautiful,” we say, missing Mayyadah more than ever. If she were here, side-by-side with her mother, we know we would have been struck by how alike they were.
Before lunch, some of us try to understand the American’s name. “It’s too hard,” we say. We ask his eldest son’s name. He doesn’t have a son. We ask his eldest daughter’s name.
“Molly.”
Abu Mali, we will call him.
Abu Mali tries every dish on the table, although he says he’s not always been fond of lamb. We put more lamb on his plate, more rice, more squash, more salad, more duqqus. Ruwaidah flattens her hand above her plate.
“Are you on a diet? Are you sick? Why won’t you eat more?” we ask. We have waited more than thirty years to feed her!
We put more food on Abu Mali’s plate.
After lunch, we serve tea and coffee, dates and tangerines. We pass around mints and cloves and luban. We cut kunafah into squares, the knife emerging sticky with syrup.
Abu Mali sips coffee, marveling at its tiny cup, its bitter taste.
We push the plate of dates toward his free hand. “You must eat one to sweeten the flavor.”
At ’Asur prayer, we turn off the television, take turns washing up in the bathroom, lay prayer rugs facing southeast, and stand in perfect alignment: men in front of the women, the oldest of us leading the group. Ruwaidah and Abu Mali sit to the side, on either end of the sofa. We do not watch them—we are praying, our foreheads drawn magnetically to the floor, our minds focusing on the words of our prayer—but some of us wonder why they don’t pray. Some of us worry for their souls.
After lunch, we walk through the rain to the nearby mall and take over the small bumper car ride in the main hall. Ruwaidah and Rula are the only ones who prefer to stand alongside, watching and talking. We wonder, at first, what they say to one another, but soon the cars lurch into action and the two women leave our minds. Our family—and Abu Mali is one of us in this instance—has taken over the bumper car ride. We worry about ganging up on the American, seeming ungracious, but he doesn’t hold back. He attacks everyone, including the teenagers but not the younger children, and soon we attack him, too, zipping in circles. We can’t keep control, and when we crash into each other, we feel the impact in our entire bodies. The children are scared and beg us to stop. A car crashes into ours and we have to keep driving. The game goes on for minutes, longer than we expected. Finally, someone gets the operator’s attention. He cuts the electricity; our cars glide to a stop.
When we stumble out, soothing frightened children, high-fiving each other, Ruwaidah and Rula are gone.
Abu Mali doesn’t notice—he’s retrieving his cap from the floor of the ride, just as the cars fill with new riders and shudder to life again. He jumps and shimmies out of the way, shouting, “Let’s do it again!”
We try to get his attention, calling his real name. Everyone’s exclaiming over one another, it seems, yelling almost, voices hoarse, until at last he understands. He holds his hat tightly under one armpit, face as disheveled-looking as his hair.
“Well, I’m sure they’re at the apartment.”
Someone saw the two sisters arguing.
Some of us are certain Abu Mali is correct; Ruwaidah and Rula have gone back, and we simply need to follow them. Some of us have no idea where the two sisters might be. We split up—half of us straggling to Rula’s flat, half of us dragging ourselves and the children to the other end of the mall. Abu Mali at first decides to go with the first group, but then he changes his mind and accompanies those of us in the second group, past the bookstore, the clothing stores, the porcelain and glassware stores.
There is Ruwaidah, looking at a set of finjans with delicate silver handles.
“Don’t ask her what happened,” Abu Mali says.
We do anyways, in Arabic so he can’t understand, but she ignores us.
We never find out what happened, but even so, in the argument between sisters, we take sides. Some of us remember Rula as a child. She liked to provoke, to give the younger children coins in return for doing her chores. She liked to pit adults against one another, like her mother and our auntie Haleemah, tattling to them about her siblings and cousins.
Rula should not have fought with Ruwaidah, her younger sister, who needs her love.
Some of us remember Ruwaidah as a child, obstinate and irreverent. She splashed water everywhere when she washed for prayer. She didn’t cover her mouth when she yawned, even after we warned her she might swallow the devil. Once, she refused to eat lamb for a month because she had watched the animal being born, fed it milk from a bottle, and petted its woolen back. She did this even though we told her it was not right to make something haram when God had made it halal.
She should not have fought with Rula, her older sister, who deserves her respect.
Some of us tell the others to say prayers for the Prophet, to rely on God’s will and mercy.
“May God mend the rift between them.”
We spend the week showing her around Istanbul, stopping for coffee and kunafah, stopping to buy apple tea, stopping to look at flowers in the gardens. When Ruwaidah talks about her garden in America, her face blossoms with pleasure as she lists what she grows: “I have tomatoes. Cucumbers. Peppers. Squash. Roses. Begonias. Snapdragons.”
We’ve never heard of begonias or snapdragons. She’s not sure what the words are for them in Arabic, so she says these words in English.
“Snapdragons are flowers with tiny, delicate mouths,” she says. “You can move them like a puppet, but you have to be careful not to smash them.” Her eyes glisten and her lips soften around the names of flowers. She speaks a little stiffly, pauses to taste the vocabulary in her mouth before uttering a noun or verb.
Some of us think back to the last time we saw her in Jidda. Was it her wedding? Was it the day she left for America with the man she divorced a few years later? We can’t recall.
“Is it true?” we ask Rula later. “Her wedding day was the one day you didn’t fight with her, from the time you were little?”
She drops three cubes of sugar into a glass of tea and stirs. “I thought she would be back in a year or two.”
Everyone thought that. No one expected Ruwaidah to stay so far away for so long.
A year-and-a-half later, in Jidda, something makes us think of her.
She’s not on Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp, so we’ve been out of touch since we said goodbye in Istanbul. One of us sends a WhatsApp message to Abu Mali, and he doesn’t respond.
The next time we see Rula, at a family gathering, sitting outside in someone’s hawsh on a warm fall night, we mention our inability to reach Ruwaidah.
“She’s well,” Rula says. “I saw her over summer break.”
“In the summer where?” we say. “In the summer and you didn’t tell us?”
“In Ohio,” Rula says. She visited Ruwaidah’s purple house, sat on her front porch; she shows us photographs of the place on her phone. Rula has eaten zucchini and tomatoes grown in Ruwaidah’s backyard garden. In Rula’s photos, the vegetables look ripe and fat.
“Mashallah,” we say.
But there are no photos of Ruwaidah and Abu Mali, or even of Rula. It seems strange. Some of us wonder: Were they fighting again? Is Rula lying about visiting her sister? Perhaps this is some random American’s house! Others of us chalk it up to Rula’s technological incompetence and her general hatred of posing for photos. We must get the younger ones to teach her how to take a selfie.
We really would like to know if they argued in Ruwaidah’s purple house. If they made up afterward, asked God’s forgiveness for vexing each other.
We would like to know, but we don’t ask.
Instead, we ask when they will see each other next. Will Ruwaidah return to Istanbul? Will she one day come to Jidda?
Rula covers her heart with her hands. She smiles, and then frowns, and then shakes her head, as though to say, “I don’t know.” As though to say, “Only God knows.”
***
Artwork by Anna Kutukova
